Thursday, May 11, 2006

My desk wrote the headline "The Case of Roberts's Missing Papers" last night, and the reporter whose name was on the story received several e-mail messages (some more polite than others) pointing out the "error" of not using Roberts'.

Lesson No. 1 here, of course, is that the reporters don't write the headlines.

Lesson No. 2: This is a matter of style, and Washington Post style calls for Roberts's. Styles vary, but if one style must be declared more correct than the other, Roberts's wins.

"The Elements of Style," in fact, makes the principle Rule 1 in Chapter 1. Sayeth Strunkwhite:

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend

Burns's poems

the witch's malice

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake.

The aggrieved readers' aggrievedness is an interesting demonstration of how well Americans have been "trained" by Associated Press style. It is true that most U.S. newspapers, because most U.S. newspapers follow AP style, would write Roberts'. AP says:

There are myriad rules within the rule -- tiny points on which virtually no two stylebooks agree -- but in general USA Today agrees with AP while the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal agree with the Post.

The Chicago Manual of Style is to more formal publishing what the Associated Press Stylebook is to newspapers, and it takes the formal route:

The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s, and the possessive of plural nouns (except for a few irregular plurals that do not end in s) by adding an apostrophe only.

(Note that Roberts as a last name does not mean "more than one Roberts.") Chicago gives Burns's poems and Dickens's novels as examples.

Words Into Type has a similar entry.

So does Garner's Modern American Usage:

To form a singular possessive, add -'s to most singular nouns--even those ending in -s, -ss, and -x (hence Jones's, Nichols's, witness's, Vitex's).

The most interesting exception, addressed by some of the above, is for Sox, as in Red Sox and White Sox. The obviously correct solution is Sox', as the spelling is an analogue of Socks (plurals take the apostrophe alone) and, of course, people just don't say "Sox's."

In my idiom at least, "Charles's" is pronounced "Charlesiz", while "Jesus'" is pronounced more as though the "s" was geminate. I wonder whether that it what has led to the common convention here in Australia and in the UK to write single-syllable names with and polysyllables without the "s".

I would write Illinois's and Corps's. The style manuals are split. Some manuals also differentiate based on whether the final syllable is accented. "The Elephants of Style" includes a chart showing how the major stylebooks handle the possessives of Kansas, Texas and Arkansas (the Arkansas ruling would apply to Illinois).

This whole style manual thing kind of bothers me. What it means is that a newspaper or publisher can change the rules. "Roberts's" is grammatically incorrect; there are no acceptions made for such a construction. But because it is printed in the newspaper that way, people will assume its use is correct, and it filters its way into modern language. And Sox' is also incorrect, "Those ending in s or x should always be followed by 's when used possessively in English" (Fowler's New Modern Usage, speaking particularly of French words, but it is applicable here.)

Sigh. I'll repeat myself: Roberts's is the formally correct version. Roberts' is the style shortcut. Perhaps you're confusing all this with the rule for plurals? If Robert Wagner and Robert Goulet buy a vacation house together, yes, it's the Roberts' vacation house, not Roberts's. But the chief justice, thank goodness, is only one person.

If I may riff off on the introduction to "Elephants of Style" -- On principle, I tend to ignore Strunk & White. A top editor made the copy editors make "however" postpositive but not ultimate, and that was a lot of work. Sadly, I worked at AP-style papers.

What makes the most sense, in my opinion, is to use "'s" only if the pronunciation of the possessive includes an extra "s". So, "James's" and "Arkansas's" but "Roberts'" and "Sox'". Given that this is a matter of style rather than grammar, why not help the reader understand how the word is pronounced?

Thank you, Bill. I do proofreading and copyediting for lawyers, a group that hates having their work changed almost as much as writers do. This topic comes up often.

We follow Chicago as a means of keeping client-facing materials consistent. It is important when putting together one document that was ultimately written by five or six people to be consistent to avoid (1) looking like idiots and (2) confusing the reader. It is not that we are claiming one style is right and another is wrong.

I also use your books often, as the lawyers enjoy your humorous explanations.

In Ireland, the possessive of James is pronounced with an extra "s", but the possessive of Roberts isn't. I should have realized that this does not make a lot of sense and picked different examples for my earlier post.